


Chonji

by MalkyTop



Series: he is beauty he is grace that's a lie please save this man from himself [8]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Fusion, Gen, shoutout to syblatortue and that most excellent fanart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-10-30 20:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10884666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalkyTop/pseuds/MalkyTop
Summary: sanji and chopper gets fused into one being, creating a flirty, anxious, pugnacious, timid, adorable mess.





	Chonji

**Author's Note:**

> Fanfiction of syblatortue's [fusion fanart.](http://syblatortue.tumblr.com/post/126043639391/anon-suggested-one-piece-fusions-when-i-asked-for)

“Thanks again for savin' my life! If there's anything I could do to repay you...”

“Nah, no prob _bweh!!_ ”

Nami stepped into the space that Luffy had so recently occupied and beamed down on the, the... _person,_ who was their new guest on the ship. This...creature was a long way from land, and there had been no sign of any nearby vessel. But it clearly couldn't swim, since Luffy had to fish it out. It was the size of a child but had the voice of a rat. Not much of it was visible underneath its plump, patchwork coat, poxed with pockets of various colors, all bulging with the unknown. It stooped under the weight of a hat that sloped so far down, the only things visible of an actual body were the glimmers of eyes and a fleshy protuberance that could have been a nose, or perhaps a chin. Sanji shifted his weight onto his other foot and chewed his cigarette. It looked much like an armadillo. And that's all he could figure.

Nami smiled her perfectly entrepreneurial grin. “Don't mind him, I'm the one who takes care of these things. So, what do you have? Valuables? Money? Other goods and services?”

“Ya,” the armadillo said, scratching at a place that might have been hair, “I dun have money or anything like that.”

Nami plopped down on her beach chair and went back to reading the newspaper.

With their unofficial manager quitting prematurely, the crew glanced at each other in a silent debate until Robin took up the mantle and said, “If you would really like to repay us, then perhaps you have an idea of how to do so?”

“Ya, well,” said the armadillo, “I'm not...really good at stuff, was the reason I went out to sea an' all; got no work experience, got no job, pretty much useless, so I figured, hey! Might well just leave!”

“That ain't a decision to just _make_ like that,” Franky said, staring down with a serious air that could only be achieved with a buff body contained by a Hawaiian shirt.

“But then I forgot that I didn't know how to sail so my boat sank,” said the armadillo with a sheepish laugh.

“ _Take that sorta thing more seriously!_ ”

“So you're basically an idiot with no concept of planning.” Sanji exhaled smoke like a cloud of disappointment. “Like we need more of those...”

“Oh, but I could show ya my devil fruit powers – “

Luffy appeared, like a light blinking on, as if he had never even been pounded to the deck in the first place. Sanji flinched and Usopp fell over, neither of them prepared for the space between them to be suddenly occupied. “Powers???” Luffy exuded the word, glitter spouting from every pore.

“Ya,” said the little 'dillo. “Ate the Fuse Fuse fruit, so's I can combine all sortsa stuff.”

“SHOW ME.”

Armadillo visibly jumped back from the aggressive enthusiasm, but when Luffy did nothing more threatening beyond plopping right down on the grass in the perfect front row seat, it lowered its rankled shoulders, tittering another nervous laugh. Somewhere in the back row, Nami slunk in unseen, her curiosity stronger than the news. Brook raised his violin in a salutation and bowed off something bouncy and vaudeville.

Of all the things this guy wasn't experienced in, it seemed that performance art was especially one of those. The show started with a lot of stuttering, some fumbling with pockets, and a gross amount of sweating – though considering the coat, maybe it was just hot. Eventually, it procured a spoon and fork and held them aloft.

“S-so, 'cause of my power, I can make two become one! ...Ya…?”

“Don't ask us,” Sanji grunted, which was apparently intimidating enough to spur the show onwards. Still, despite his disgruntled demeanor, Sanji couldn't help but admit that a combination spoon and fork could certainly be useful under some circumstances. As the armadillo guy crossed the two utensils, releasing a burst of light, Sanji considered asking if he could keep the result.

The result was a fork and spoon fused together in the shape of a cross.

“ _THAT'S COMPLETELY USELESS!!_ ” The Sunny itself shook with the force of several voices sounding off in unison, enough for poor 'dillo to stumble over backwards with only a silverware cross for a shield – only useful against vampires. And demons, unless it was more ironware; then that would be...fairies, probably?

Luffy, the only satisfied customer, plucked the cross out of its hands and dangled it between two fingers. “Woah, it's really fused! Guys, guys, look!”

“Yeah, we _saw,_ Luffy.” Nami looked like she was ready to go back to her newspaper.

“It's an interesting parlor trick,” Sanji admitted, “but you can't really _do_ anything with it, can you.”

“Hey now...this's the only thing I'm good at, ya know? I can do _loads_ of things with this! Hang on, hang on, watch!” The armadillo grabbed Sanji's hand before he could pull away, grabbed Chopper's, and there was another flash of light, this time accompanied by the feeling of intense heat, melting, assembling…

Everybody stared at where Sanji and Chopper had been. In their place stood... _someone._ Someone that looked remarkably like Sanji and remarkably like Chopper, blond hair with that stupid style, but also antlers and ears and a nose that certainly weren't human, hair, hair _everywhere,_ or maybe it would be more accurate to call it fur, hands that ended in fingers made of keratin and legs that ended in hooves. A weird combination of suit jackets and shorts, and somewhere, there was room for a tail that was currently bristling.

He – they – _someone_ slowly raised their hands to their face, from cheeks to ears to the antlers, oh god the _antlers,_ and then they – he – _someone_ started making a soft sound that went like, “ _aaaaaaaaaaaaa_ ”

“See? That's somethin', ya?”

The ship exploded again, for a different reason.

“Holy crap holy crap what just happened, where the who did what go where”

“Damn idiot cook had to open his mouth – “

“AWESOME!”

“Reindeer-gorilla, swirly cook-bro, get it together! ...Reindeer cook-bro? Or...Coorilla-bro?”

“They seem unresponsive at the moment. Perhaps the experience has irreparably shattered their minds.”

“Are you saying that they are better off dead?! Though, being dead myself, I can't say I have much complaints.”

“Hey _you,_ ” Nami shouted, picking up the armadillo with ease. “You can't just _do_ that to people! Turn them back!”

“It's the Fuse Fuse fruit, not the Fuse Unfuse fruit.” Dangling from Nami's tight grip, the armadillo guy flinched when she raised a fist. “Ya, ya, okay, look, no worries, ya? They'll be fine!”

“They don't _look_ fine,” Nami growled, pointing back to the Sanji-Chopper conglomeration, which had moved on from screaming quietly to screaming loudly.

“Ya, errybody does that, they'll get used to it.”

There was the sound of a sword scraping out of its sheath a quarter of an inch.

“L-look, it'll wear off, I swear! Two people don't like being one fer that long, unless they're _super_ compatible or sometin'! They'll just bust apart in an hour or so! Honest!”

Zoro snapped his sword back into place and Nami finally dropped the armadillo guy back to the floor. It bounced to its feet with a sigh and hastily brushed off its coat of many pockets.

“Hey, do me next!”

Nami pounded Luffy on the head so hard that he slammed to the deck and didn't get up. “ _You,_ ” she snarled at the quavering 'dillo, “are going to sit in a corner and touch _nothing_ until we get to the next island and kick you off.”

The Sunny's latest guest just nodded.

* * *

“Ummmm, Sapper.”

“Ew. No.”

“Chappy?”

“Vetoed.”

“Ojicherppsan.”

“ _That's not even a name._ ”

Eventually, the bizarre addendum to the Straw Hat pirates had calmed down – probably due to a hoarse throat more than anything else – and everybody took this chance to lead the not-reindeer, not-human into the dining room for a seat. Nami wanted to have a physical done, but unfortunately, the doctor was also the patient in this case, so everybody just milled around awkwardly until it seemed pretty clear that their friends-turned-friend wouldn't explode or something, which seemed healthy enough – even while sitting too straight, too tense, eyes flitting like the hunted, looking for a chance to bolt.

And now Luffy was figuring out a name.

Usopp had stayed just to make sure nothing regrettable would happen, but everything seemed to be going smoothly. No more tap-tapping of hooves, nobody looked on the verge of barfing, just two friends arguing about a name. Two. Three?

“So, how can we tell who's talking?”

All four eyes turned towards him, even though by all rights it should be six. “Whaddya mean?”

“Like that! Who just said that just now, Sanji or Chopper?”

“Don't be stupid, Usopp,” said Luffy with a pitying look in his eyes. “It's Sachonjipper.”

“It's _not,_ ” said Sachonjipper, sounding a lot like Sanji, but still like Chopper at the same time.

“Ya, yer thinkin' 'bout this wrong,” said the armadillo, spinning around in its seat. Usopp pointed and frowned until it turned around again, facing the Time Out Corner proper.

“Ya, so like, yer thinkin' 'bout this guy as two people when he's one, even though this one is made of two.”

Usopp blinked, very slowly. “You lost me.”

“See, it's prolly more accurate to think of this guy as the biological child of – “

“Okay, that's it, I'm not listening anymore, please shut up now.”

“ – formin' a completely new life form with a completely new existence.”

Usopp wheeled back around to face some non-traumatizing friends and stared right at the new existence before him. “Look, do you wanna be called 'he' or 'they?'”

“Mmm...I feel like a 'he.'”

“Alright, question answered; now you just need a name.”

“How about – “

“Nobody's asking _you,_ Luffy.”

* * *

He was introduced to the rest of the crew as Chonji.

“Short for Sachonjipper,” said Luffy, only to get whacked on his head by a hefty antler.

“Soooo...how are you feeling,” Nami tried.

Chonji's ears pricked and then flattened in thought as he hummed and tilted his head to the side. “Weird. Confused. Kinda nervous. Really conflicted about smoking. I'm mostly okay though, my vision's fine and I'm not passing out from heat stroke or anything and there isn't any pain anywhere. Heartbeat's regular. Lungs could be better, but that's to be expected.”

Nami leaned back with the look of someone already exhausted by all this bullshit. “Well, if anything, it's made you ridiculously cute.”

Instantly, Chonji stiffened. Looked like he was going to scream again. But instead, he chose the more reasonable option of fleeing to the infirmary and slamming the door behind him, only to open it again and peer out in the only way a being that was partly Chopper could – the wrong way.

“Oh my god,” Nami said, and she covered her face in her hands and leaned over the table again, shoulders quivering a storm. Usopp followed suit, hand over his mouth to keep in some very unmanly squeak. Zoro scooted his chair back, his face the very image of mortification.

“That's it, I'm out,” he said, hands raised like he was trying really hard to not touch _anything_ related to this exact moment. “Tell me when he's back to normal.” And then he abandoned everybody else for the sanctuary of his weight room, where there were no irritatingly cute and cutely irritating reindeer-man to mess with his conception of life, the universe, and everything. At this, Chonji seemed to flush, but nevertheless blurted out, “What, you got a _problem_ with me, shithead?!”

Everybody lost their composure. Even Robin had to lower her head so that her bangs obscured her eyes, and yet she couldn't quite hide the way her mouth painfully replicated a waveform that, when read with the proper machinery, would probably have sounded like a squeal.

“Oh my god,” Nami repeated at last. “He's _really_ cute oh my god I'm not sure how I can take this.”

“Shut up, I'm not!” Chonji insisted, though after a few minutes he added, “But if you think so, w-wanna go on a date…?”

“Ask me again when you're not half fifteen and half a reindeer.”

It wasn't a no, and so Chonji made a distressedly happy sound and shut himself back in the infirmary once again.

* * *

The dock they landed at was quaint and quiet. It had taken three hours to get there, during which Chonji had jumped after Luffy three times, got his antlers tangled in everybody's laundry about seventeen, and had a nervous breakdown twice (the first was over keeping the kitchen clean of his fur, the second was after he had provoked Zoro enough for him to draw his swords, upon which he fainted at the sight).

Three hours, and Chonji was still Chonji.

“Ya, I guess they're more compatible'n I thought? Shouldn't take too long, prolly. Can I leave now please?”

Nami tapped her foot, face still thunderously dark, but magnanimously decreed, “Yes, your time out is over. Now get the hell off our ship.”

The armadillo wasted no time after hearing the word 'yes' and had already scurried out the door before Nami finished getting all her words out, never to be seen again. Good. Could give someone else a headache for a change.

Nami pinched her nose, thought about enforcing a new rule of just ignoring anybody they came across floating in the sea, and turned to the kitchen. “Hey, uh. Chonji? You holding up okay?”

Chonji looked up from the fridge, accidentally banging his antlers against the top. Despite the salty curse, he responded with a bright “mmhm!” and added, “I gotta go restock and stuff, so I'm going to town soon. Do you need anything?”

“Mmm, I can just go with you.”

Chonji stiffened, then slowly puttered back to life. “Oh, cool,” he said casually, but his face said otherwise, lighting up with joy like an arsonist's daydream. Nami took one look at his uncontrollable expression and snorted so hard that she ended up choking on her own spit.

* * *

The market was a symphony of smells and Chonji kept flitting about them, constantly distracted by one thing or another, and making it hard for Nami and Franky (who had joined to help carry bags) to even catch up. But since Chonji could just smell his way back (which he did often, accompanied by a constant babble about the ripeness of various produce in his arms that faded away when he zoomed off to whatever else attracted his attention), they simply stopped chasing after him and strolled their way down the street.

All this sensory information was just...exhilarating, somehow, even though part of him was used to this experience. But utilizing his senses for a domain they weren't usually used for just felt...smart. Amazing. Really freaking great! The way he could inhale the green onions and feel the taste in his nose, so crisp and heavy on his tongue, the way he could hear the contours of the sound of bread, of watermelon, one a cacophony of the brisk crunch of autumn leaves and the other the beat of a hollow drum that reverberated through its juices and bounced off the rind until it lost its volume and wasted away.

He was just leaning down to press his ear against another watermelon when, quite suddenly, he was attacked by a broom.

His reaction was the only reasonable one, which was to duck backwards and fix his bewildered, betrayed eyes on his assaulter – in this case, the stall owner, a hefty woman with beastly arms who startled at the sight of his face and blurted out, “Oh, you're – I thought – the antlers – “

“What's the big idea?!”

Nami appeared like a thief and announced her presence like a really bad one, moving her way in front of Chonji with a hand on her hip and the devil in her eyes. Franky rolled up a few minutes after, and despite his disapproving scowl and large figure, he looked _less_ intimidating.

The shopkeeper raised her hands as a mollifying shield. “I really thought he was some wild deer eating the merch or something, honest! It's just the, the antlers!”

“Oh, I see, so you don't treat _all_ people like this, just my friend? That's discrimination. This woman discriminates! She's beating away a customer just because of his appearance! Discrimination!”

“Hey, hey, hey!” the stall owner hissed out, as though leading by example would get Nami to stop marching back and forth, yelling accusations at the top of her lungs. In one desperate lunge over her storefront, she made a swing to catch Nami and drag her back, only for her target to dance out of reach and continue her crusade.

“N-Nami, it's fine, I'm fine, okay?”

“Yeah, listen to him! It was an honest mistake and I'm sorry I did it!”

Nami pivoted on her heel and brought her face in close with a leering smile. “In that case, shouldn't you give us an apology discount?”

Franky and Chonji could only stand and stare in awe at the might of Nami's ruthlessness. “When I first joined, that girlie scared the shit out of me and somehow she still does.”

Chonji found himself nodding, but said, “Say that again and I'll kick your ass.”

What should have been raucous laughter instead turned into a shout of shock and pain as Franky tipped forward, propelled by a shot to the back. Chonji had heard the crack of the gunshot before his nose filled with the smell of gunpowder, before he saw Franky fall into view beside him, and it was wrong, so wrong, to be able to see his face without having to look up, and it was so wrong for that face to be gritted in a subdued expression rather than being as loud as his taste in shirts. There might have been other gunshots – he couldn't tell, because after the first it felt like the world had just muted itself. He could see Nami turn, shaken out of her element, and say something, but he was too busy whirling around to hear, with gunpowder in his lungs and coating his brain, the stuff dragging him along by the nose and he followed it, fueled by a too-honest love and a violent temper until he was finally where he had to be and he raked the gunner with his horns.

At some point, he had ingested a rumble ball. He hadn't even known if it would work, but there he was, horns less like a rack and more like protruding swords that pierced through a wall, pinning the gunner by his armpits. He would have thrown the asshole up and let him break his neck, but as it turned out, there hadn't been only _one_ aspiring bounty hunter.

A broad knife came startlingly close to splitting his shoulder open, but he jerked out of the way, dislodging his first target from his horns in the process. He fixed his stare onto his second, who flinched and backed away in a very satisfying manner. “Oh man, oh man, I _told_ you we're out of our league here! What the hell _is_ that thing?!”

Chonji bristled, but not at the insult. Rather, there was a severe lack of blood being shed, and he was very intent on changing that.

“I don't know, I don't know, it wasn't on the bounty posters!” The first one screeched before raising that gun again, the gun that still smelled of fire and smoke, but Chonji was too fast, had already sidestepped before the shot was even made, and then he leaned down, rolled, and snapped his legs upwards and out so that his hooves cracked against the guy's chin and sent him soaring.

He wheeled towards the other, felt all the power he had placed in his horns pump down to his arms until they bulked with muscles that screamed bloody murder, and slammed their entire mass right into the other's face.

Or, he would have, if the shithead hadn't thought to jump to the side and swipe back with that knife. Chonji instinctively held up a hand, and even though much of his hand was made of hoof, it wasn't enough to stand up to an actual blade.

He felt nothing, not when the knife wedged into his pinky and kept on pressing, digging deep even when his arm couldn't push back against the force and instead relented, until the swing finished, until the knife bit all the way through, and he saw four sausage-like pieces fly through the air, found his eyes inextricably drawn to them as they seemed to hover, twist in the air, before curving downwards, and he didn't notice at all that his defenses were now wide open…

“ _Strong Right!_ ”

He felt his hair flutter with the sudden absence of a knife-wielding enemy and eventually processed the resulting crash into a nearby building. It was enough for him to break away from staring at the, at – but he found himself looking at his hand instead, the shape of it, like a steep slope, his eyes skiing down it over and over again.

“Bro, _bro,_ snap outta it!”

“What happened, what's wrong, why's he – _oh my god_ ”

There was an anxiety in those voices that he didn't like, and still staring, he mumbled, “Hooves grow back. Hooves grow back...they do, it's okay, keratin...like fingernails...they...”

Something churned within him, forcing his mouth shut. His head started to boil. His index finger only lost the tip, but trailing to the right, each one had more and more missing until the last could barely even be called a stump, didn't even have _joints,_ and that was about the time Chonji completely melted and his two constituent parts shot away from each other rather violently, dazed and disoriented.

To Franky's credit, despite having been shot in the back a few times, he reacted quick and scooped up both smaller crew mates in his arms. He even remembered the grocery cart.

“W-wait! We need to – shouldn't we – his _fingers,_ we have to, to _get_ them, right?!” Nami said, halfway crouched to the ground, but looking a little too hysterical for such a morbid scavenger hunt.

“No time, someone's called the marines already, we gotta _jet!_ ” And before anybody could argue, Franky ran off with the speed of someone who was used to evading law enforcement, leaving Nami to follow behind just because it felt good to follow _someone_ who seemed to know what he was doing.

The ride was rough. Franky wasn't built with suspension in mind. Nevertheless, the whole way back to the Sunny, Sanji never once took his eyes off his hand.

* * *

Chopper was the one who recovered first, his lucidity born out of the necessity for someone to remove the bullets from Franky's back. Sanji seemed to have roused out of his stupor a little while later, but was seen drowning vegetables in the sink, mindlessly rubbing the dirt out until his hands turned wrinkly and raw, and it was only when Usopp tapped him on the shoulder that he stopped and actually began to make dinner proper.

Nobody felt the courage to speak up about today's incident during the meal, and perhaps it was simply because each one was waiting for someone else to start. But, in the end, everybody remained a bystander, and the moment for a heart-to-heart passed when someone thought to compliment his cooking and he responded with an embarrassingly open smile and an all too-hearty, “Shut the fuck up! Y'mean it?”

The next few days were rather bizarre in subtle ways. Sanji would duck his head every time he walked through a door, forget to slip on his shoes, hesitate before jumping into the ocean, avoid meat. And though he could have been said to have worn his heart on his sleeve before, now, it was emblazoned, dipped in neon and stapled in place. He smiled easily. Laughed easily. Startled easily. Even cried easily, only to draw up the dregs of his masculine facade to insist that he wasn't, it's the shitty onions, honest.

On the one hand it was almost nice, to have him not feign constant disinterest, to see him allow himself to get excited about Franky's cool upgrades or Usopp's tall tales, to hear him admit so unthinkingly whenever he was scared, no wait, _startled,_ he was startled, that's all, not scared, never scared, shut up.

Though...it made it hard for anybody to approach him about, well, about...the _thing._ When Sanji, one of the trio of monsters, who threw himself into certain death situations and came out with smoke and new curses, was just so... _emotional._ So raw and so child-like and so, so _Chopper._

So time went on. And what had been a recent tragedy expired into simply a bad memory, aided by the fact that Sanji never seemed to have problems with his new handicap. Eventually, he even remembered to put on shoes, though he couldn't quite stop ducking through doors.

He could even convince himself that everything had settled into routine, until he woke up one night and instinctively knew someone was missing and who it was without having to look.

Chopper was sitting at the back of the ship, out of sight from the night watch. Sanji curled up beside him and was acknowledged with the barest of glances. Both of them automatically started riffling through their pockets, only for one to actually bring out cigarettes. Sanji tilted the box towards Chopper and was promptly refused. Which he expected, but it did well to be polite once in a while.

What had it felt like, to be fused with another being? They had been asked that several times by curious crew members, and neither of them could come up with a satisfactory answer. Or maybe both of them felt the experience much too private to share. Sometimes Sanji would lean over the bathroom sink, staring into the mirror until his eyes watered, until he could remember the things that were his and the things that weren't.

The hardest part was navigating the things that were similar.

His memories of loneliness bled into memories of isolation, of a hatred he didn't understand directed towards himself, a hatred that he eventually dealt back only to find humanity once more. His memories of an inexplicable kindness given to his undeserving existence bled into memories of death, a death he caused. Shackles that tied him (them) down to one place, taking different forms, but shackles all the same, that were only broken by the same brash kid that came into his (their) life without asking.

“You never told me you experienced starvation,” Chopper started, looking at the sea they were leaving behind.

“I didn't think I needed to. It was a long time ago.”

“There are many long term side-effects, especially for children.”

“Increased risk of poor health,” Sanji agreed, letting smoke escape from his lungs in languid puffs. Chopper gave his cigarette a brief, incredulous look.

The two of them fell back into silence, somehow used to not having to communicate and finding it necessary all over again. Sanji thought about being shot as a kid, barely able to talk. Fear, with the bitter knowledge that he was simply built to be alone, forever.

“You holding up okay? I know it's hard to deal with. Still have nightmares, sometimes,” he admitted, tracing an abstract concept with the lit end of his cigarette.

Chopper shook his head. “I mean...I... _remember_ it, but that's all, it's not like I, I actually _felt_ it or anything...”

“Sometimes the memory is enough. Just...if anything happens, like...y'know...come to me, okay?” Sanji shifted, starting to feel sore. The ship was much too quiet. There was none of the rambunctious antics of the day, only the gentle slosh of waves and, if he strained his ears, the snoring that heralded the existence of people other than themselves. The absence pulled at his throat, and he eventually blurted out, “I'm sorry.”

Chopper swung his face towards him, eyes wide enough to reflect the moonlight. “Huh? No, no, that's not – well, I mean, of course it's important, but, it's not – I'm just, I'll be fine, but – _I_ should be sorry,” and his breath hitched suddenly, a hiccup that he had to struggle through in order to say, “It's _my fault.”_

“What?” Sanji said, not expecting to be thrown into an apology tango, didn't even know what Chopper was apologizing for. “Look, it's not really _anybody's_ fault – “

“B-but...if I wasn't so, so _weak..._ y-your hand...”

His hand. His incomplete hand, all misaligned, looking like a shoddy staircase going down; his brain froze, but he felt himself say, “You're not weak.”

Chopper had already started to cry and had gained too much momentum to stop. But he somehow managed to quiet down, control his own mouth enough to protest, “Y-you're so _strong_ wi-without me though, it's my fault, if it wasn't for m- _me,_ it wouldn't've – “

“No, no no,” Sanji said, his voice starting to hush as he scooped Chopper up in his arms, physical contact another thing he had grown partial to after the incident. With this move, all restraint flew out the window and Chopper started to bawl, no doubt attracting at least the night watch's attention. “It's, I've got a shitty temper, and sometimes I just don't _think,_ okay? It wasn't because you're weak, because you're _not._ We should've gotten those bullets out of Franky first – I just, I was just so fucking _pissed._ ”

Sanji's self-aggrandizing babble seemed to have some sort of calming effect at least, and Chopper's wailing slowly quieted back down into sobs, and then to snuffles, until the two of them were just clinging to each other for the stability that they just couldn't get alone. Sanji buried his face into Chopper's shoulder.

“Don't use me as a shitty tissue!” But Chopper was laughing, and Sanji wheezed back but clutched tighter, pressed closer until he could almost think that they were one again.

“You're not weak,” he repeated, softly. “You smile easily. You get happy easily. That's, it feels fucking _great._ And you're just like that normally, but. For me. This is the best I've felt in a long time, because of you. So. I'm just sorry that, y'know, I'm a piece of shit with nothing good to give back.”

Chopper shifted, forcing Sanji to look down at his face. “You don't think you had a good influence on me?”

“Every time you curse out that marimo bastard, Robin-chan glares at me.”

“But, um,” Chopper said, looking down with something akin to embarrassment. “You're so calm, and, and, you always know what to do! And, um. That feels good too. So.”

“You're happy it happened?” Sanji finished, and when Chopper nodded his head fervently, he smiled as wide as he could and said, “Me too.”

And it was like they had released a discordant sigh together, everything that had gone untouched now out in the open air and rising out of sight. Sanji let Chopper down, left hand squeezing his left hoof, the two a match in unnatural slopes.

Chopper's would grow back eventually and his wouldn't, not ever, but that was fine. In truth, Sanji felt a peaceful content that he had never had when he had all his fingers. And he grabbed hold of it, held it close to his heart, engraved it there with a chisel, a mark left when two kindred souls had been one.

 


End file.
